Posts Tagged: women of the wall Results 52

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously made a distinction between sacred space and sacred time. Jews – who for much of history were itinerant, kicked out of one country, and expelled from another – sanctified time, unlike Christians, who sanctified space. Sacred space took a back seat to sacred time and Shabbat, he argued, no matter where in the world we were, became our cathedral in time, because we didn’t have cathedrals. We, as wandering Jews, could pray anywhere; in the desert, on a mountaintop.

TEL AVIV — David Sharan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s U.S.-born chief of staff, who is heading negotiations on an egalitarian Western Wall plaza, will be the Israeli Cabinet’s next secretary.

The Women of the Wall group held Passover holiday prayers at the Western Wall, but did not hold a priestly blessing ceremony, after being banned by Israel’s attorney general.

Some 200 women arrived at the Western Wall on buses from throughout the country to hold the Shacharit, or morning, prayers, and Mussaf, or additional, prayers for Passover on Sunday morning, the first day of the intermediate days of the holiday in Israel. During the consecutive services held in the women’s section of the Western Wall plaza, the women read the priestly blessing, but did not raise their hands and make the traditional symbol nor cover their heads with their talitot.